“The Sunday evening Wall Street Journal article claiming that Apple ad cut its iPhone 5 display orders drastically for the March quarter made quite a splash,” Tero Kuittinen writes for BGR. “The way WSJ wrote its piece seemed to support the original Nikkei claim about Apple cutting its iPhone 5 display orders in half from the originally planned order of 65 million units.”

“This would be a massive adjustment,” Kuittinen writes. “But Apple uses the same new display type for both iPhone 5 and the latest iPod touch. Neither WSJ nor Nikkei addressed this, however — both seem to be referring to just iPhone 5 displays.”

Kuittinen writes, “why did Nikkei publish a report stating that Apple had halved its display orders for the quarter from 65 million units? Nikkei was quite specific with the 65 million number. And it clearly tied it to iPhone 5 component orders, not total iPhone or iPhone 5 and iPod touch orders. In what world did Apple expect to order components for 65 million iPhone 5 handsets in the seasonally soft March quarter?”

Ya know, this stuff used to go on back in the “beleaguered” days as well. The rumor mill would say “Apple is broke, just about to go out of business.” I’d look at the balance sheet, they’d have 8 billion dollars in the bank, and basically not owe anyone anything. Long from bankrupt. Then Bill Gates invested some paltry symbolic 100 million or something and the talking point became, “Bill Gates rescues Apple.”

These days I have more than one foil hat with the way the country is being run, but come on, if this crap isn’t being orchestrated, I don’t know what is.

It ties in with the mystery of why Apple has been vilified not just recently but pretty much all along…too long a period to support a comprehensive conspiracy theory. I’ve tried (and failed) to understand this in terms of group dynamics, historical analogies, and even neuroscience. Somehow, the cheese stands alone.

Doesn’t this imbecile realize that AAPL Q2 (CY Q1) is almost as big as the preceding quarter, and getting bigger every year? AAPL Q2 is the Asian Lunar New Year quarter, as big a gift giving time in Asia as December is in the West.

“In what world did Apple expect to order components for 65 million iPhone 5 handsets in the seasonally soft March quarter?”

Exactly. They were HOPING for 50 million iPhone 5 sales in the Christmas quarter. 65 million for the March quarter? Somebody’s been smoking some very strange stuff. 32 million iPhone 5s in the March quarter wouldn’t be unreasonable.

Apple is facing increasing competition from manufacturers selling phones with larger screens. Apple has to provide consumers with phones with larger real estate to compete on an equal footing. It’s only logical that designing a larger iPhone to supplant the iPhone 5 would require contracting for newer components.

This time you are at least partially correct. Aside from the fact that there is no way Apple would order 65 million iPhone screens for the March quarter in the first place, and the fact that 32 million sounds like a normal March quarter order based on Christmas quarter sales, it’s entirely likely that any or all of three factors are involved:

1. The rumor fails to mention that those screens are also used for iPod Touch devices, sales of which are being cannibalized by iPad Minis, which don’t use the same screen.

2. Apple has designed a new screen for a new iPhone due out shortly.

3. Apple has found a new supplier not in Japan to supplement the sources which are all in Japan, which is a dangerous situation, as recent earthquake history tells us.